Examples
Week 1: Listen to the waves.
Assignment: Write a short paragraph describing the problem your startup solves, and why it’s a problem worth solving.
Example: Medical research shows that a healthy breakfast is an important way to start the day. And yet many busy professionals and families don’t have the time to prepare a healthy breakfast for themselves every morning.
Week 2: Build something people want.
Assignment: You’ve written your problem statement, now write your proposed solution statement. But it’s just a hypothesis – so how will we test and validate it?
Example for our class venture:
Solution Statement: For busy people who want to eat healthy, we are developing a subscription-based service that delivers fresh, healthy breakfasts directly to your home or office.
How we will test and validate: We will start by actively interviewing people about their breakfast habits, so that we really understand how people think about breakfast and health. We’ll start with people we know, and then we’ll break out of our echo chamber by asking some random people in the park. Then we’ll design some “prototype” breakfasts that we can easily make, and set up booths in a few farmer’s markets, serving healthy breakfasts from people and getting their input on whether they like our idea of healthy breakfast items (as well as collecting their emails so that we can target them later. Then we’ll do a “beta launch” of the new service in our own neighborhood so that we can learn about pricing, as well as refine the logistics and packaging issues. Along the way we will learn a lot, and have a much better idea of whether our idea for a fresh, healthy breakfast delivery service aligns with the needs of the market.
Week 2: Draw the landscape.
Do your research on the competitors and alternatives for your startup. Then figure out a way that you could create a visualization of that landscape, and how your startup will fit in.
Week 4: Create an engine of growth.
Create a Business Model Canvas for your venture. You can either download my PDF, or you can use one of the many digital versions on Miro, Canva, Strategyzer, Mural, etc.
